Extending the Infosphere to Mobile Platforms Using Optimized COTS Technologies

The objective of this proposal is to demonstrate methods for extending the Battlespace Infosphere to mobile platforms using optimized COTS technologies. The 1999 USAF Scientific Advisory Board report titled Building the Joint Battlespace Infosphereidentifies the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) as one of the most promising technologies for representing JBI information objects. Indeed, many DoD users are already adopting XML for wired applications. However, transmitting XML data over wireless datalinks and processing it on embedded and mobile platforms has proved challenging due to the size and complexity of XML data. Effectively, this creates a data representation rift between wired and wireless users of the Battlespace Infosphere.We propose novel and uniquely efficient methods for encoding and processing XML data to eliminate this rift. The resulting methods promise to enable deployment of XML solutions on small embedded and mobile devices with limited bandwidth, memory, processingpower and/or battery life. This will afford mobile users unprecedented access to the wealth of enterprise information encoded in XML and enable enterprise users easy access to information gathered by mobile users. In addition, it promises to drasticallyincrease the performance of existing XML solutions and increase opportunities for exploiting COTS software on embedded and mobile platforms. We anticipate our research will result in increased interoperability and information sharing between fixed and mobile platforms. It will drastically reduce costs by enabling the use of COTS software in environments where it is not feasible today. It willincrease the performance, battery life and available bandwidth for mobile platforms and introduce new opportunities for advanced development.